Articles

Oldest Land Plants

Oldest land plants found, according to a report in Nature, vol 425 p282, 18 September 2003 and New Scientist 20 September 2003, p22. Charles Wellman of the University of Sheffield, UK and colleagues in Oman have found spores from liverworts (low growing plants similar to mosses) in sandy siltstones in Oman believed to be 450 million years old. Palaeontologists were able to identify them because of the "exquisitely preserved spore wall ultrastructure" (microscopic structure).

Editorial Comment: The real reason these spores could be identified is that they are similar to spores from living liverworts. Therefore, what ever age these fossil spores are, they indicate liverworts have multiplied after their kind, just as Genesis says they were created to do. Furthermore, exquisite preservation of microscopic structures can only occur if the spores were buried rapidly and deeply, so that they are not degraded by bacteria or chemical processes. (Ref. liverworts, spores, after their kind)